Who doesn’t love weekends, right? As we all prepare for a long weekend, one mother will soon be dreading hers for a while. A 34-year-old Suffolk, Va., mother was given a six-month jail sentence for mooning her son’s school bus after she had a confrontation with the bus driver.
Lisa Grant was convicted this week of disorderly conduct, according to reports, resulting from the November 2012 incident. She admitted she had a heated talk with the driver, but she claims she only showed her underwear, not bare skin, when she mooned the bus with about 45 students aboard at the time. Grant confronted the female driver after she received a note from her saying her son was misbehaving, which a school spokeswoman said was a warning.
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From misbehaving mothers to jokester bus drivers, one video that’s going viral online is of a school bus driver pulling an April Fool’s Day prank with the students on his bus.
Though you can’t see any faces in the video, you can hear the driver telling students that class was cancelled for the day and they had an extra day off. After the students discover it’s a joke, they begin to yell but with disappointment. One student even screams, “I hate you!” but it all ends somewhat lighthearted as the driver simply laughs and says “Oh, I know.”
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Charlie Hood, the state director of student transportation at the Florida Department of Education, was recently helping his mom move when he found a 50-year report on the educational progress of Pinellas County Schools since its inception in 1912. Hood said his grandmother was an English teacher at St. Petersburg High School for 40 years until the mid-1960s. One article stood out to Hood as it did to us. Surely you’ll agree.
“Then – Lumbering to School was an Adventure” details how student transportation had evolved over the previous five decades. It includes a timeline of memorable dates, such as the fall of 1922 when what was at the time known as Lealman District, operated the first county-owned school bus — a Ford Worm Drive. And the driver was one Mrs. Norma Mohr Trowell, whom the article says set a precedent in the county for female drivers. Prior, on Sept. 19, 1913, the school board agreed to pay one-half the cost of transporting students who lived more than three miles from school.
Read the entire article and view some pictures that show Pinellas County school buses of the past, from wagons and jitneys to later-model school buses and a futuristic plan from Wayne Bus Division.
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Last Friday, Galludet University in Washington, D.C., celebrated its 144th graduating class. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a former member of Galludet’s Board of Trustees, keynoted the event and writes on his blog that the world leader in educating students who are deaf and hard of hearing has been bold over the years in overcoming many obstacles. President Abraham Lincoln, LaHood points out, was bold in signing the charter that formed Galludet in 1864.
The university has also surely faced its share of transportation challenges. Galludet’s transportation department maintains its own fleet of school buses for to-and-from school transportation as well as to and from school-sanctioned activities. The district does a lot of training, as is attested by the attendance of professional staff at national conferences, such as the STN EXPO.
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Earlier this month, a tribute was held in Yuba City, Calif., to remember the 29 people, mostly students, who died on May 21, 1976, when their school bus went over the side of a freeway overpass in Martinez, Calif., and plunged 30 feet. The Yuba City High School choir was on its way to a competition.
This month also marks the 25th anniversary of the 1988 Carrolton, Ky., bus crash. A drunk driver struck a church bus head-on the evening of May 14 as it was returning from a youth outing. Twenty-seven people, most of them children, were killed in the resulting fire when they could not evacuate the bus because exits were blocked. The worst drunk-driving crash in U.S. history resulted in new federal safety standards for school buses and gave prominence to M.A.D.D. There is also a movie based on the tragedy. “Impact: After the Crash” was screened on May 17.
